NEWSNIGHT presenter Jeremy Paxman fought to reveal the truth about Jimmy Savile and told BBC bosses of “serious consequences” if the expose was dropped.

In correspondence never seen before, Paxman, 62, emailed the programme’s editor Peter Rippon within an hour of him writing a blog explaining why the investigation was axed.

He warned him: “I think we make a problem for ourselves by running away from this story.”

Rippon had tried to justify the shelving of the programme, which would have exposed the decades of abuse carried out by once-revered BBC star Savile.

I think we make a problem for ourselves by running away from this story

Jeremy Paxman in an email to Newsnight editor Peter Rippon

He claimed it was a “non-story”. He told Paxman: “In the end I just felt what we had... Forty-year-old contestable claims about a dead guy was not a NN [Newsnight] story and not worth the fuss.”

Paxman, who has worked at the BBC since 1977, tried to convince him otherwise by arguing “the story raises serious questions about journalistic ethics – different burdens of proof for the living and the dead – which are slap-bang in our terrain.

“If we don’t tackle it, I fear it looks like we’re hiding.”

Offering his support, Paxman told Rippon: “I think it is very unfair (and sadly not at all untypical) that the BBC has dumped this on one individual.”

Rippon, who made the decision in the knowledge that ITV was to screen its own expose a day later, has been redeployed.